Okay so, this is going to be a long feedback. I don’t know where to post this so I saw this thread and the title made sense.
So, I am a returning player after 1 or 2 years, I don’t even remember. When my friend said “Hey there is a 140 Valar up in the store, let’s do that and do some PVMP and maybe PVE.” I said “Why not?”
I immediately regretted it and remembered why I stopped playing long ago.
Are you developing new content? Are you trying to balance classes or other things? Are you trying to bring new items to the store? Are you trying to add new customizations to the characters? Any answer to these questions is redundant until all the servers get rid of the lag.
I’ve been playing this game for 11 years; my friend has been playing since the very beginning and what both of us experienced in our long period of playing this game is LAG. A game shouldn’t be hanged in the minds of its players with “lag”. Of course, I had many amazing memories but...
Right now, the Ettenmoors in Evernight server is literally unplayable. Most of the action is usually based on chance because of the lag, it is not even like PVP it is a gamble! You press a button and pray that the skill worked. Sometimes there are these huge lag spikes where ALL of the players stuck for at least 3-4 mins and sometimes raid vs. raids or the spots with the crowded areas are like those stop-motion videos. I thought this was only an issue with Ettenmoors but no. When I logged in to my alt I was doing quests in Evendim and in every 5-10 mins I receive these long lag spikes with “Reduced Awareness” showing up.
I am not going to name-drop here but even the low-budget, low-tier MMORPGS or the private servers of these MMORPGS are lagless whereas a game with a 16 years of history struggles with huge lag issues every day. So, my humble suggestion here is that the devs should drop everything that they do about the game and just focus on solving this issue. I mean, we are living in 2023 with terabytes of databases up online and gigabytes of fiber infrastructure world-wide.
I, as a long-time player of this game, just expect a smooth gameplay. No new areas, no new quests, no new instances but immediate solution to this problem. Only then any of the updates and developments that you bring to this game will make sense.
Of course, I don’t want to just grouch about lag and just leave. I also want to share some of my ideas about PVMP in particular, BUT please; solve the lag first and only then these can make sense. Please note that since it has only been a week or two of playing this game after a long break, some of these maybe incorrect or may sound unreasonable and also I have limited feedback on class balances since I was only able to play few classes in both sides.
• First of all, I want to start with one of the most striking things that I’ve seen in the PVMP: Defiler. Never have I seen a class this broken in the history of this game. Even the Rohan-era Champion cannot compete with this. I am not going to write this in detail, I am sure everyone is aware of this fact. Around 300-500k heal per tick? Only one or two HoT that a Defiler puts to any creep of any rank with any audacity outheals any Freep class in a 1v1 situation. This is absurd and this state shouldn’t even lasted more than 72 hours.
• In contrast with the Defiler, the Shadow Warg is extremely fragile. Well, that’s okay for a high-dps class to be fragile but its DPS is in a miserable state. I was solo killing high rank shadow wargs with my rank 5 RK with missing gears and this is the first time I am playing RK in PVMP. This shouldn’t be possible.
• The lightning rune-stone of RKs are well… broken. An AoE slow as large as Spider’s web combined with two stuns and damage output aaand it is ground targeted when fully traited. None of the creep classes has a skill that is as advantageous as this one.
• Maybe for at least for 10 years, the issue where players get stuck in combat after a lag spike still persists… I mean come on…
• The map change and the implementation of the March skill to the Creep side is amazing. This has been an issue for a very long time because freeps had much more mobility than creeps. This change hugely balanced the mobility of both sides. Great change!
• The first thing I realised when I first played PVMP after a long break was the incredibly high health pool of the mobs and their damage output. I don’t know much about this change but as far as I read the forums, it makes sense with the upcoming Siege! updates. However, imho; this change also kills the solo/small group action in the game. The meta of the game pushes people to form larger groups, however, it also punishes those who form raids by preventing them getting loots from the mobs. Also, it has become nearly impossible for those newbies of both sides to complete quests and get some infamy/renown+comms.
• Removing DoF was a bad idea. It pushes people to the shuffle game-style. When a side gets crushed on the map, they usually moved the action to DoF in hopes to get a huge buff swing. Right-now, only thing that the losing side does is to just sit… I heard that the DoF will be coming back to the map with some changes, I hope it will be quick.
• I have no idea why those NPCs and items of old end-game eras are still in GV. Every time I return to this game after a break I find myself running like a headless chicken between NPCs to find the most current gear NPC. Even the barters from 50 lvl end-game is still there! Is it because of the cosmetics? I mean.. I guess not because the cosmetics of PVP gear of this game has always been miserable.
• Fellowship manoeuvres to the mobs in Moors have become obsolete. Three red+one yellow or full red or full yellow doesn’t even tickle the elite or higher tier mobs.
• Session plays have become obsolete. These should either be removed or renewed.
• Keeper of Gifts, the anniversary barterer in GV gives a Platinum Gift Box for 5 Steel Tokens. I bartered one. Opened it and voila! It gave me 25 Anfalas Celebrant Salves, giving around 635 power when used. My power pool is 93,910.
• Training dummies in GV are not working properly. Their mitigations are higher than it should be. I am hitting around 350k with Epic Conclusion on Light Training Dummy. The last time I hit a Shadow Warg with epic was around 1m. Any of these dummies are not reflective of the real DPS that is done can be done to creeps.
• Everytime I played this game reavers were a problem for the devs to balance. Right now, it is worse. They have high amount of dps, high amount of self-heal and high amount of mitigations. At least one of these should fall short. I mean I am choosing WLs as a target for my RK rather than Reavers, this should be the summary of this.
That is all the things that I can write from top of my head. But as I mentioned earlier. There is one issue to be solved to rule them all: LAG.